We were picked up by a private driver in front of our hotel and whisked 30 minutes away up the hills of Sorrento.
Of course, as with all transportation in Italy, there was some slight confusion. When he dropped us off, he wasn't sure which building and then got confused when we told him we were going to a pizza making class.
He eventually figured out that it was the house up the hill -- yes, we were always going uphill or downhill in Sorrento.
There we met our instructor, Lucciana, and our fellow classmates, an Indian family from San Fernando, Calif.
After getting to know the family a little bit, Lucciana showed us how to make a little chicken dish as an appetizer.
That's us after the class was over. It turns out that I was not a star pupil. Head of the class? More like dead last in the class.
If there had been a written exam at the end of the session about what we learned, I bet I'd have kicked butt. Though the 12-year-old Indian boy, Sean, seemed quite astute.
First things first in pizza making is the dough. Lucciana gave us a good laugh when she said the dough is like a woman, every day is different, based on the weather. Some days more water. Some days more yeast.
And much like my expertise with women, I did not master the dough.
Lucciana went through her kneading process and then gave us all the ingredients to take our turns.
Here's Nicole working on her flour game.
That's Sean's grandmother and Sean's left arm. Lucciana judged our doughs when we were done. Sean won, Grandmother was second, Nicole was third, fourth through sixth was mom and dad and their younger son, and then in last place was me.
For appetizers we had the chicken and the best eggplant parm I've ever had. It was also the best thing I tasted in the first six days of our honeymoon.
Lucciana, maker of the world's best eggplant parm, kept calling me Geno. Which is fine and all, except Nicole liked it and hasn't called me Gene since.
"Geno, time to get ready." "Geno, I love you." "Are you hungry, Geno?"
Then it was time to make our own individual pizza. We didn't use the dough we had made in class as Lucciana said proper dough needed like 10 hours to settle right. So we used dough she made earlier in the day.
Here's Nicole spreading her tomato sauce on her pizza.
She added mozzarella and parmesan cheese and olive oil. I added zucchini and the cheeses. I ate almost my whole pizza before three scoops of chocolate gelato came out. Yum.
We also got wine, Coke, water and a shot of limoncello. We're not sure how much the three-hour evening costs because it was part of our package, but damn was it worth it.
And not just for the experience of pizza class and the lessons from Lucciana. We really hit it off with the other couple, Pan and Nikki. We talked about football, poker, traveling, Italy, work and life.
When we said we were from New Orleans, they said oh, we're going in September. I gave them some non French Quarter restaurants and said we'd meet them at Mandina's when they came.
That's our view from Lucciana's balcony. She's been cooking in this village her whole life and said she would never move. Duh.
That's Nikki to the far right.
It was a great night, and I could imagine a life in that area, with Lucciana cooking all our food and us touring the Italian islands with Pan and Nikki.
And there would be eggplant parm. Lots and lots of eggplant parm.
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